The Call of the Cumberlands Part 44

"But now--?" The Kentuckian broke off.

"Now, I know that my friends.h.i.+p for you and my love for him have both had their acid test--and I am happier than I've ever been before. I'm glad we've been through it. There are no doubts ahead. I've got you both."

"About him," said Samson, thoughtfully. "May I tell you something which, although it's a thing in your own heart, you have never quite known?"

She nodded, and he went on.

"The thing which you call fascination in me was really just a proxy, Drennie. You were liking qualities in me that were really his qualities. Just because you had known him only in gentle guise, his finish blinded you to his courage. Because he could turn 'to woman the heart of a woman,' you failed to see that under it was the 'iron and fire.' You thought you saw those qualities in me, because I wore my bark as s.h.a.ggy as that scaling hickory over there. When he was getting anonymous threats of death every morning, he didn't mention them to you. He talked of teas and dances. I know his danger was real, because they tried to have me kill him--and if I'd been the man they took me for, I reckon I'd have done it. I was mad to my marrow that night--for a minute. I don't hold a brief for Wilfred, but I know that you liked me first for qualities which he has as strongly as I--and more strongly. He's a braver man than I, because, though raised to gentle things, when you ordered him into the fight, he was there. He never turned back, or flickered. I was raised on raw meat and gunpowder, but he went in without training."

The girl's eyes grew grave and thoughtful, and for the rest of the way she rode in silence.

There were transformations, too, in the house of Spicer South. Windows had been cut, and lamps adopted. It was no longer so crudely a pioneer abode. While they waited for dinner, a girl lightly crossed the stile, and came up to the house. Adrienne met her at the door, while Samson and Horton stood back, waiting. Suddenly, Miss Lescott halted and regarded the newcomer in surprise. It was the same girl she had seen, yet a different girl. Her hair no longer fell in tangled ma.s.ses. Her feet were no longer bare. Her dress, though simple, was charming, and, when she spoke, her English had dropped its half-illiterate peculiarities, though the voice still held its bird-like melody.

"Oh, Samson," cried Adrienne, "you two have been deceiving me! Sally, you were making up, dressing the part back there, and letting me patronize you."

Sally's laughter broke from her throat in a musical peal, but it still held the note of shyness, and it was Samson who spoke.

"I made the others ride on, and I got Sally to meet you just as she was when I left her to go East." He spoke with a touch of the mountaineer's over-sensitive pride. "I wanted you first to see my people, not as they are going to be, but as they were. I wanted you to know how proud I am of them--just that way."

That evening, the four of them walked together over to the cabin of the Widow Miller. At the stile, Adrienne Lescott turned to the girl, and said:

"I suppose this place is preempted. I'm going to take Wilfred down there by the creek, and leave you two alone."

Sally protested with mountain hospitality, but even under the moon she once more colored adorably.

Adrienne turned up the collar of her sweater around her throat, and, when she and the man who had waited, stood leaning on the rail of the footbridge, she laid a hand on his arm.

"Has the water flowed by my mill, Wilfred?" she asked.

"What do you mean?" His voice trembled.

"Will you have anything to ask me when Christmas comes?"

"If I can wait that long, Drennie," he told her.

"Don't wait, dear," she suddenly exclaimed, turning toward him, and raising eyes that held his answer. "Ask me now!"

But the question which he asked was one that his lips smothered as he pressed them against her own.

Back where the poplar threw its sooty shadow on the road, two figures sat close together on the top of a stile, talking happily in whispers.

A girl raised her face, and the moon shone on the deepness of her eyes, as her lips curved in a trembling smile.

"You've come back, Samson," she said in a low voice, "but, if I'd known how lovely she was, I'd have given up hoping. I don't see what made you come."

Her voice dropped again into the tender cadence of dialect.

"I couldn't live withouten ye, Samson. I jest couldn't do hit." Would he remember when she had said that before?

"I reckon, Sally," he promptly told her, "I couldn't live withouten _you,_ neither." Then, he added, fervently, "I'm plumb dead sh.o.r.e I couldn't."

THE END